Column by Hal Walter
Western life – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHITHER THE RANCHER, that gnarled and stoic figure of Western lore? And what do the words “ranch” and “rancher” mean in the New West? Probably no word conjures up the Western mythology more than “ranch,” a notion visually propped by The Big Valley, Bonanza, and The High Chaparral, and more recently Lonesome Dove, Legends of the Fall, and All the Pretty Horses.
Sidebar by Clint Driscoll
Transportation – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
1. The old Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad depot, shown during prepartions for its move last spring, is not the only piece of railroading history hidden away in Buena Vista. Other structures related to the Midland, D&RG, and the DSP&P still exist today, although their uses, and in soem cases their forms, have changed.
Sidebar by Central Staff
Transportation – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
The old South Park railroad thrives, after a fashion, near Nathrop as the Stew’s Pot & Wearsat Railroad — a 1/28-scale layout which runs from the Wearsat depot, across the yard, and then indoors through walls and over ceilings.
Owner Stew Brown says that Wearsat, elevation 8470 and population 1, “has become a favorite tourist attraction for retirees with grandchidlren and kids’s groups.”
Article by Clint Driscoll
Transportation – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
“The point is, people like you and me are just dilettantes, layabouts if you like, these people really care!”
— Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
THERE IS NO MORE AVID a hobbyist than a railroad buff. In fact, railroad workers refer to them as “foamers” because they tend to foam at the mouth whenever they see a locomotive or discuss their favorite topic. A special group of foamers (a term most buffs take pride in), the Denver, South Park and Pacific Historical Society, met for their fifth annual convention in Leadville this past Labor Day weekend. They came from as far away as America’s east and west coasts and even England’s East Anglia to talk about and retrace a section of their favorite railroad.
Review by Ed Quillen
Books – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
EVERY WINTER, Martha tells me it’s time to write a list of favorite books from the preceding year, and unlike most of our writings about books, these selections don’t have to concern Central Colorado.
Review by Virginia M. Simmons
Penitentes – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Land of the Penitentes Land of Tradition
by Ruben.E. Archuleta
Privately printed, Pueblo, CO, 2003
ISBN 0-9742840-0-9
Review by Ed Quillen
Southern Colorado – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Warriors, Widows, and Orphans And Other Tales of Southern Colorado
by Kay Beth Faris-Avery
Published in 2003 by Western Reflections
ISBN 1-890437-77-8
Column by George Sibley
American life – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
2004: Another year starting, an important year. Here in its dark early days, dare we hope that it turns out to be a truly “new year”?
Happy New Year! If you’re like me, you’ll say that rather mindlessly over the next few weeks. But, if you’re really like me, you’ll think, as you walk away from those encounters: Does he or she really want a new year? Or would he or she be happy enough with the same old year over again?
Sidebar by Ken Jessen
Local Lore – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Certainly, in visiting over 600 abandoned town sites in the American West, I have had some very eerie feelings. This is especially true when I am alone poking inside some old miner’s shack on a dark overcast day near dusk. Might ghosts live in ghost towns? It certainly seems logical, but I have never seen a ghost in a ghost town. However, in the quiet solitude of the mountains, I can be startled by the sound of a piece of corrugated sheet metal flapping in the wind.
Sidebar by Wendell Hutchinson
Local Lore – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
A beautiful woman lived in the upper end of the San Luis Valley. Her home was in the wooded timber area between Villa Grove and the top of Poncha Pass. I can remember the remains of the house along the south side of the highway. My great uncle Bailey pointed it out to me one day when we were chasing cows in that region.
Sidebar by Martha Quillen
Local Lore – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Way back in September, Colorado Central asked writer-formerly-in-residence, Columbine Quillen (who continues to labor for the home team on occasion), to collect a few local ghost stories to round out our Hallowe’en feature. But as it turned out, our main feature was a little longer than expected.
Article by Columbine Quillen
Local lore – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
ASK ABOUT GHOSTS In Salida and you’ll hear plenty of stories. Some say the old bookstore used to be haunted, the Lovelace, the First Street Café, the Odd Fellows Hall, or perhaps even most of the buildings on First Street, and many of the upstairs apartments overlooking F Street. But Amícas, over on Second Street, seems to house the most spooks.
Essay by Jim Stiles
Politics – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Originally Published in the Canyon Country Zephyr
NOTE: What follows is clearly a figment of my fatigued imagination. I am not a biblical scholar; I am probably not even a Christian as most religious organizations would define it. But I grew up going to a Protestant church and, even as a child, can remember being confused by Christianity’s apparent dual message. In the Gospels, Jesus spoke of love and compassion and, uncompromisingly, he spoke against violence, anger and hate toward our perceived enemies. And yet, Christians are always fighting against each other, against other religions, against any perceived enemy. And it’s always done in the name of the man who created a religion out of the concept of pacifism.
This piece of fiction will probably enrage narrow-minded, conservative Christians who will call it blasphemy. And it will enrage narrow-minded knee-jerk liberals who will see it as some violation of the separation of church and state (“Did you see the new Zephyr? It’s turning it into a Bible Study Newsletter!”)
Essay by Martha Quillen
Modern life – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
LAST SPRING I was talking to Lynda La Rocca and mentioned how irritating I thought it was that the word “Christian” had been usurped by political conservatives.
And wrong, too, because Christians clearly come in all parties, and embrace all sorts of political platforms. There are anti-war Christians and environmental activist Christians and communist Christians and gay Christians. There are Christians who support prayer in the schools, and Christians who feel that school prayer is inappropriate. There are Christians who believe in evolution, and Christians who embrace creationism. There are French Christians, and Middle Eastern Christians, and South American Christians, and even anti-American Christians.
Sidebar by Ed Quillen
Politics – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Now it’s official, more or less: Chaffee and Lake counties are in the 5th Congressional District, thanks to a Dec. 1 ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court.
The court upheld the boundaries which had been in place for the 2002 election — boundaries that put Chaffee and Lake in the 5th with Colorado Springs. These boundaries had been drawn by a judge in Denver after the legislature could not agree on new boundaries in its 2001-02 session.
Article by Ellen Miller
Politics – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A DECADE, the 3rd Congressional District is a truly competitive open seat, and candidates for both parties are lining up.
The dust has settled somewhat in the fight over redistricting — although state Representative Carl Miller, D-Leadville, was attempting at deadline to fight the state Supreme Court ruling. He wants Lake and Chaffee counties in the 3rd, rather than the 5th, which makes sense from a commonality of interest standpoint.
Letter from Emily Tracy
Politics – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
The Dec. 1 ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court is important to Colorado voters.
The ruling assures voters that the Colorado General Assembly cannot create chaos by redrawing the boundary lines for U.S. Congressional Districts multiple times in each decade. So, no matter which political party happens to be in power each year of the decade, voters can be sure that the Congressional District in which they live early in the decade will be the same District they live in each year of the decade. The Court found that the General Assembly can only re-draw the Congressional districts after each census and before the general election that follows the census.
Letter from S. Roger Kirkpatrick
Geography – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
There will be nit pickers complaining about Denver Post writers that don’t know how far it is from Cortez to Mancos [p. 7, December edition], but you can just tell them it was an omission as in:
Letter from Dick Bulinski
Language – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Martha,
I apologize. I didn’t intend to imply that you weren’t using a dictionary or the other tools of your profession. Somewhere, something fell through the cracks. I suppose I was expressing my frustration at our collective reliance on methods that facilitate the urgency of moving on to the next task on our list.
Brief by Central Staff
Pets – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Private pilots need to spend time in the air to maintain their proficiency, and there are times when animals need to be transported. Those two needs are combined in Sky Ark, a non-profit organization based in Buena Vista.
Brief by Central Staff
Media – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Pilgrimage magazine has moved to Central Colorado; last summer it migrated from North Carolina to Crestone, where Peter Anderson will be the editor and publisher.
It’s published twice a year, and the quick description would be “literary journal,” although its focus is more on “personal, reflective writing.”
Brief by Central Staff
Media – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
We understand that town names like Saguache and Cotopaxi can be easy to misspell. But Hartsel?
This was in a collection of “Unique Holiday Traditions around the State” in the November/December edition of EnCompass, the magazine for members of Rocky Mountain Motorists, also known as AAA Colorado. (AAA used to stand for American Automobile Association, but now its formal name is just the initials.)
Brief by Central Staff
History – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
The old Valley View School, a few miles west of Salida on County Road 140, has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. This makes it eligible for grant money to assist with restoration to put it back into use as a school — an alternative high school.
Brief by Ed Quillen
Local news – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Lost and Found
The first heavy snows of winter are generally welcomed, since they mean skiers now and water next spring. But those storms aren’t a good place to spend the night.
On Nov. 17, 30-year-old Matt Rhoads of Salida parked atop Monarch Pass and headed south along the crest. He had his snowboard and his dog, a mix of shepherd and border collie; they reached the head of Foose’s Creek.
Brief by Central Staff
History – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
There won’t be an Anza Day here in 2004, but that doesn’t mean that the 1779 campaign by Juan Bautista de Anza will not be commemorated. Indeed, Poncha Springs and Salida will host the ninth annual Anza World Conference in late August.
Brief by Central Staff
Salida politics – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
After the litigation of 1998, when we and other media successfully sued the Salida City Council for violating the state open meetings law, we had hoped that the city had learned something in the process.
But we might have been wrong. The city council apparently circumvented the Sunshine Law in the process of replacing Municipal Judge Bill Alderton with a Crested Butte lawyer.
Brief by Central Staff
Transportation – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
When the Union Pacific Railroad swallowed the Denver & Rio Grande Western in 1996, the plan was to abandon the railroad through Central Colorado — that is, the 170 miles from Cañon City through Salida and Buena Vista on over Tennessee Pass.
Brief by Central Staff
Public health – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
In Central Colorado, the usual winter infection — fever, sniffles, aches, nausea — is generally called something like “the crud that’s going around.”
But it’s worse than usual this year. Colorado is one of the states most affected by the Fujian strain of influenza. As of our deadline, there were 6,306 confirmed cases — more than 2001 and 2002 combined — and at least eight children had died.
Brief by Marcia Darnell
Sn Luis Valley – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
.22 Trouble
Seven students at Ortega Middle School in Alamosa were suspended for bringing guns and ammo to school. Two .22 handguns and numerous bullets were found by the school staff. Law enforcement leaped on the little delinquents, and public opinion of the handling of the situation is good, although there are those who want the kids expelled. Three of them face felony charges.
Comic Strip written and drawn by Clint Driscoll
Mountain Life – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Essay by Stacy Mitchell
Tax policy – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
TYPICAL OF SHOPPING CENTERS built decades ago, Alameda Square in Denver is a cheap, single-story strip of stores. It’s ugly and rundown. But that does not deter shoppers. Mostly Asian Americans, shoppers come from miles around to patronize more than a dozen Asian-owned businesses, including two grocery stores, two restaurants, a hair salon, a clothing shop, a jeweler and a bakery.
HYDROLOGY
Although a snowstorm is raging across the West, snowpack in Colorado, as a percentage of average, is currently at 97%. Basin stats are as follows: Gunnison, 109%; Colorado, 91%; South Platte, 68%; North Platte, 98%; Yampa/White, 109%; Arkansas, 69%; Rio Grande, 96%; San Juan/Dolores, 103%. The Colorado River Basin is in its 5th year of drought. Unregulated inflow in water year 2003 was only 53 percent of average. Unregulated inflow in 2000, 2001 and 2002 was 62, 59, and 25 percent of average, respectively. Lake Powell storage is 11.5 million acre-feet (47 percent of capacity).
Brief by Central Staff
Census – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
If you visit Como or Guffey, let alone the often-lonely roads to those settlements, you wouldn’t think you were anywhere near a metropolitan area. But the federal government has recently decided that they’re part of a Metropolitan Statistical Area, just like Boulder or Lakewood.
